There's a better word for what I am: an apatheist.
It's a neologism that fuses "apathy" and "theism." It means someone who has absolutely no interest in the question of a god's (or gods') existence, and is just as uninterested in telling anyone else what to believe.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

No Habeas Corpus

Oh, shit. The senate bill to restore habeascorpus rights has failed. I had meant to post a request to call senators about this, but I was busy calling them myself. Now, it's done:

Breaking: Senate rejects habeas legislation.

In a 56-43 vote, the Senate today “narrowly rejected” legislation that would have restored habeascorpus rights to military detainees and given them “the right to protest their detention in federal court.” The roll call fell four votes short of the 60 needed to cut off debate.

UPDATE II:Leahy has put out a statement reacting to the vote:

It is difficult to defend the higher ground by taking the lower road. The world knows what our enemies stand for. The world also knows what this country has tried to stand for and live up to — in the best of times, and the worst of times. … We will not give up on this important effort.

And I also have a basic question: Why is it that since the democrats became the majority in '06 the threshold for passing any legislation is now 60 votes? That is the number needed to end a filibuster, not to pass a bill. The rethugs have made the filibuster standard procedure, though they screamed like scalded owls those few times when democrats filibustered a few extremist judicial nominees. Can we please call the rethugs "obstructionist" now?

1 comment:

Actually without 67 votes, the Democrats can't pass legislation over a veto. So if they got 60, that would become the new benchmark.

And there aren't 60, much less 67 Democrats in the Senate. Every single Democrat and several Republicans voted to restore habeas. But some of these are the same assholes who voted to give it away before.